MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: Jo Ann Snover on October 29, 2012, 11:20
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iStock has a new app on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/istock/app_275813035777202) for searching the collection - although I use the word search very loosely. The results are downright weird, generally putting very old images (from 2002 and 2003 in several of those I tried) on the first page.
In the iStock thread talking (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=348455) about this, some wag referred to the search order as Worst Match. I think that's being kind. Instead of presenting the best of the collection, or even new stuff, you get something that looks like a bad freebie image site. Perhaps they worked on this during the rock-paper-scissors tournament? There is a line at the bottom that says Product Catalog powered by SKUmatic (http://www.skumatic.com/) so perhaps the problems are in part because of the tool they used to implement this?
There is the other issue about why they'd be doing this instead of fixing all the broken stuff with the main site. At this point I'm assuming that zoom and ratings went away because they switched to Getty code for the image pages and they're wondering if they can get away with leaving them out.
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The whole "product catalog" bit tells me it is some off site powered app, that probably has no insight to the behind the scenes workings of the data.
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Even if the results were newest first vs. oldest first, you'd get something more useful. One wonders if anyone actually tried any test searches before making this live.
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It seems to doing two stupid, contradictory things at the same time.
1. It's breaking down keyword phrases (in the CV) and only giving results for the first word. So I searched for African Wild Dog, which is in the CV, and it's showing high sellers with the word 'African' only.
2. Conversely, it's splitting CV phrases in the keywords. So a search on Iceberg is bringing up not only the usual batch of Iceberg Lettuces keyworded Iceberg, Lettuce although 'Iceberg Lettuce' is in the CV, but also throwing up Iceberg Lettuces keyworded correctly "Iceberg Lettuce" and not 'Iceberg'.
Total, utter FAIL.
No surprise there. >:(